Nearly 30 students cluster in chemistry teacher Casey Brown’s room, but instead of balancing reactions or reviewing lab reports, they sit in small circles, focused on cards featuring powerful spells and illustrations of wizards, witches and dragons. Their goal? To defeat each other in Magic: The Gathering, a card game that has shaped Dr. Brown’s life both inside and outside the classroom.

“I learned to play it when I was in middle school and it was brand new,” Dr. Brown said. “There were kids playing it in the hallways. I said, ‘hi’ and started amassing some cards and playing
with them. I stayed with that friend group pretty much throughout all of high school.”

Dr. Brown’s love for strategy-based card games sparked a fascination with tackling complex problems, leading him to initially join a psychology lab in his first year of college. However, after a summer of researching rats, he realized that his skills were better suited to a different path. A few years of working in a chemistry lab deepened his passion, and he eventually turned his focus to teaching.

“What I love about teaching is that it gives a lot of food for thought,” Dr. Brown said. “There’s a lot to chew on and try to improve and iterate upon, and those card games feature that too: did I build my deck correctly? Did I play with a long-term goal in mind? Was this the right decision based on these probabilities?”

Magic: The Gathering stands as the first-ever trading card game, boasting features such as card types, rarity levels and expansion packs which remain common in most trading games, like Pokémon, today. Players select certain cards from their collection, which represent specific spells with varying power levels and effects, to use against competitors in a duel.

“Card games are a nice manifestation of something that is hard to learn,” Dr. Brown said. “You want to think that if you make the right decisions, you will get the most positive outcome, but life doesn’t work that way at all. Sometimes your mistakes lead to good things, and sometimes you’ll do everything right and still have a bad outcome.”

After working in a close-knit chemistry lab, Dr. Brown committed to Teach for America, a two-year program that sent him to teach at a school district in Los Angeles that was struggling to attract qualified candidates. Though he spent upwards of 90 hours every week juggling both teaching science and taking education classes, Dr. Brown formed deep connections with his students, bonding with them over science and, unexpectedly, Magic: The Gathering.

“It was the only thing I did with my free time, and I taught some kids in my classes how to play,” Dr. Brown said. “They would come after school and I’d have 30 kids in my room and they’d all be playing with my old Magic the Gathering cards.”

His passion for teaching students not just chemistry but anything they want to learn, even card games, extends to his interactions with colleagues.  Mala Raghavan, who teaches AP Chemistry alongside Dr. Brown, appreciates how he makes conversations more interesting with his unique perspectives.

“I go and bounce ideas off of him and ask him about organic chemistry or other things,” Dr. Raghavan said. “It’s very entertaining to talk to him. He has a dry sense of humor which mixes with matter of fact statements – he says things and I’ll just laugh my head off. I enjoy hearing from him, whether it’s about what a student does or something about science or politics.”

Just as he has discovered the best spells for winning a duel in Magic: The Gathering and has amassed a vast collection of cards, Dr. Brown has found that teaching offers a similar fulfillment and strives to use his knowledge to inspire and support his students.

“We all want to feel like what we’re doing is purposeful,” Dr. Brown said. “I don’t always feel like everything about this job is perfect, but I never feel like it’s a waste – spending time creating problems for kids to solve, talking to kids about problems or doing the verbal back and forth. I’m doing my best to help a group of kids hone academic skills. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to do that.”